Oh Euston is a turd, but it probably still will be after they've turned into the HS2 terminus. It's a real shame having those awful office blocks and bus garage in front of that shit station, but we'll still have all of that. We'd all be better off if we restored Euston to it's former glory and leave it to serve the lines it already serves, because that's the whole point of the new railway isn't it? Brand new lines that don't rely on Victorian infrastructure? So why don't we build a new station where you can easily walk across a platform from HS1 to HS2 without traipsing around Camden for shits and giggles? Somewhere like Old Oak Common perhaps?

More or less my exact thoughts. It's just short-sighted to put it off any longer. We need new rail infrastructure; there's not much capacity left in the overworked and increasingly expensive existing system. Our loading gauge means that trains can't become wider or taller without altering every bridge and tunnel, they can only get longer.

A new high-speed network can address this. It's a clean sheet and can be designed for the future needs, we rarely get a chance to do this.

As for alternatives? Bigger airports and wider motorways would surely aggravate NIMBYs even more, and still rely heavily on oil.

Many rail groups have pointed out dozens of projects Network Rail want to carry out on East & West Coast lines that would speed up travel to London by a similar amount, give much greater support to Freight trains and increase capacity all at a fraction of the cost. They could also be started almost immediately instead of in 5 years.

Ignoring the rail system they could run fibre optic cables to every home and business in the UK for less than £10bn. For £25bn they could underground the power network at the same time. No electricity or telephone polls anywhere, super-fast internet for everyone and £7bn on improving the rail network.

For me it's not about the idea of High Speed rail, it's about what else you could do with the money.

El_MUERkO wrote:
Ignoring the rail system they could run fibre optic cables to every home and business in the UK for less than £10bn. For £25bn they could underground the power network at the same time. No electricity or telephone polls anywhere, super-fast internet for everyone and £7bn on improving the rail network.

Holy shit... now that would have made a massive difference to the UK. I would go so far to say it would likely have significantly improved the country.

On the existing WCML, the APT high speed prototype went from London to Glasgow in 3 hours 50 minutes. That was in the 80's, we could probably do a whole lot more with the current network if we put even a quarter of this proposed budget into it. It's a shame everyone gets blinded by the shiny newness of getting Germans or Japanese to build our train system, who don't allow foreign firms like us to even bid for these contracts on their networks.

Increases in speed = increased capacity. I don't see how it could possibly help distribute wealth from the south east, if anything it'll make it easier to justify basing your operations in London because you could expect people to travel the extra distance. Bye bye satellite operations in Birmingham, we've just rented a mega office in Guildford. Thanks HS2 and Crossrail!

El_MUERkO wrote:
Ignoring the rail system they could run fibre optic cables to every home and business in the UK for less than £10bn. For £25bn they could underground the power network at the same time. No electricity or telephone polls anywhere, super-fast internet for everyone and £7bn on improving the rail network.

Holy shit... now that would have made a massive difference to the UK. I would go so far to say it would likely have significantly improved the country.

Yeah, I saw it described (by someone on the BBC news, maybe?) as "isn't this exactly the sort of project dictators tend to announce when they're trying to give themselves legitimacy?"

It's great that after decades of neglect the government are planning to invest in rail and therefore create some jobs, but they do seem to have picked the worst way to do it. The figures for shorter journey times to Scotland look great, until you see the part where it's 20 years til they take effect.

I like the Muerko Plan much better.

Hell, we're spending public money on subsidizing private companies to run the railways anyway, so why not take them back into state control and stop bleeding cash into the pockets of the likes of Stagecoach?

Germany has a manufacturing sector and will subsidize the costs of building a spur line to your factory to load freight so it's not on the roads. We're spending billions to move businessmen from Birmingham to London quicker in fifteen years time.

elstoof wrote:
Increases in speed = increased capacity. I don't see how it could possibly help distribute wealth from the south east, if anything it'll make it easier to justify basing your operations in London because you could expect people to travel the extra distance. Bye bye satellite operations in Birmingham, we've just rented a mega office in Guildford. Thanks HS2 and Crossrail!

mcmonkeyplc wrote:
So people commuting to London where they can get paid more won't benefit the local economies of where these people live?

People won't spend their money locally at all? Won't be able to afford bigger housing? Won't be able to afford newer cars? Won't shop at their local supermarkets...

Companies won't want to operate in area's where the land is cheaper, office space is cheaper but they still have easy fast access to the capital?

mcmonkey, y ou're making it sound like Birmingham is packed full of unemployed businessmen sitting in bedsits, fully suited and crying into their empty briefcases "Damn you slow trains! I want a BMW and a 4 bed semi!"

teamHAM wrote:
A woman, who recently had her house valued at 275k, has now been told it has a value of £0 due to it's proximity to the proposed HS2 route.

Absolutely astonishing.

That has to be complete bollocks. Next time you are on a train look out the window and see if you think every house you can spot is worthless.

Its quite handy for the family though - the mother is in care, the house is worthless (so it can be transferred to the family with no tax liability). Because the mother has no assets she'll get free care.

Re Brum to the continent, there's a proposal as part of this HS2 phase 1 proposal for a new junction somewhere in Camden which will divert southerly trains from heading to Euston towards HS1 and the channel tunnel instead. Presumably, from what people here are saying, this will pass through Stratford, but presumably not stop there.

Edit: @BrokenKey As I understand it, it's only been valued at zilch for the purposes of securing a mortgage. Doesn't mean you can buy it for that price, or for taxation purposes.

It's the same bullshit "infrastructure" policy this country seems to peddle constantly. If they really want to improve transport links, how about electrifying the parts of the network that still run on diesel but are too far away from London for the government to care about? How about making it easier to go from Manchester to Sheffield or Liverpool to Nottingham instead of just connecting everyone up to London even more than they already are?

teamHAM wrote:
A woman, who recently had her house valued at 275k, has now been told it has a value of £0 due to it's proximity to the proposed HS2 route.

Absolutely astonishing.

That has to be complete bollocks. Next time you are on a train look out the window and see if you think every house you can spot is worthless.

Its quite handy for the family though - the mother is in care, the house is worthless (so it can be transferred to the family with no tax liability). Because the mother has no assets she'll get free care.

faux_carnation wrote:
It's the same bullshit "infrastructure" policy this country seems to peddle constantly. If they really want to improve transport links, how about electrifying the parts of the network that still run on diesel but are too far away from London for the government to care about? How about making it easier to go from Manchester to Sheffield or Liverpool to Nottingham instead of just connecting everyone up to London even more than they already are?

They are, thats what this about, its about increasing capacity, reducing pressure points on the entire network, its absurd that we have to rely on a broken 19th century network. The uk has out grown it, we should of started building this years ago, unless you think teleportation is going to be a viable transport alternative we need more rails

I'm not sure if this has been covered in this thread yet. What has really been bothering me about the whole HS2 £80billion projected project is why are we still paying to keep the failing private train operators making profit from government subsidy, while at the same time letting the price-walk-on-train-fares be ten times the means of a minimum wage worker.

For the £40billion we've put by for this project, we could buy back the entire UK train network and fix all the network flow issues in cross country and upgrade parts of the network that have diminished the service in privatised hands. We could then look to subsidize the cost of travel to match journey duration cost to minimum wage rate, to make it “PUBLIC” transport again.

The government primary job at the moment is helping more unemployed back into gainful NI/Inc Tax paying work, so that we get economic growth and larger VAT receipts. The irony is that the poorest in society are forced to drive to save money, while the wealthiest are paying silly prices for the convenience of crowded rail services.

As a nation we must be a laughing stock with the Germans when they look at our definition of public transport, the service level and financial setup, and the private company subsidy; and that is before we go waste £80billion on a project to give failing private operators more ways to fleece the public.

I'm not against adding HS2 to a great public owned UK train network that is already at its best and used by the "public", but this is just glossing over the cracks with £40-£80billion imo.

Agreed, the UK is about the perfect size for it. Domestic air travel doesn't make much sense most of the time and the trains as we all know are pants. The nimbys would still complain but a hyperloop would in theory have a smaller impact on the surrounding area (being a closed system).

We need to build it, its essential it's not an replacement for the existing lines its an additional component to the currently overstretched, out of date system.

Its not an either or, situation they are also doing:

-£37.5 billion by Network Rail between 2014 and 2019
-delivery of Crossrail and Thameslink in London
-an 850 mile national programme of electrification
-new fleets of faster trains on the East Coast and Great Western mainlines